[edstrelow]

I am no great fan of lp's but I am of the age where I have quite a few in my collection. Generally I felt that even first generation digital sound was better than messing with a turntable. However last night I realized that I had both an old vinyl recording and a digital re-issue of Alexander Brailowski playing Chopin Polonaises. The LP was issued by Columbia in the 1960's and my copy is at least 40 years old. The CD is a Sony re-issue about the mid 80's. The mazurkas are currently unavailable on cd by the way.

I had been listening to the other side of the LP which has mazurkas, using a B&O TX2 tangential tracking turntable with a fairly good magnetic cartridge. (B&O calls it moving micro cross or some such thing). Mostly I was listening thorugh an old Stax SRA12S pre-amp/headphone amp driving low bias Stax Sigma electrostatic phones (the big boxy ones, no longer made) . After a while I also listened to the polonaise side and then started looking through my Chopin cd's. I realized I had several same tracks on both the cd and lp.

So I switched over to the cd and immediately thought it was missing some sparkle. The cd player was a decent but not spectacular Sherwood Newcastle with which I have generally been happy in my secondary systems. The upper frequencies were dull and lifeless and you couldn't follow some of the faster notes. I switched back and forth several times and always preferred the lp, even though it had clicks, pops and swooshes as background noise whereas the cd had a silent background.

This surprised me, given my preference for cd but then I turned the lp over and played the mazurkas. Now it was clear that the lp sound was inferior, largely missing treble even by comparison with the cd and certainly by comparison with the side with the polonaises.

I suspect that the difference is due to the fact that I much prefer the mazurkas and have played that one side many more times than the the polonaises, possibly a 20 to 1 ratio. The mazurka side was probably much more worn although still listenable.

I take the point that some of this could be due to a bad re-mastering of the cd. Although how difficult is this for a professional lab? I have made many transfers from lp to cd which were surprisingly close to the lp sound with a $200.00 disc copier. Also this cd had not been given my full dose of disc tweaks, which I will do when I get time. Also , I believe that while the noise is an irritant, it creates an impression of high frequency sparkle to the sound.

Still this kind of says it for me, some lp's can sound very good, possibly better than cd re-issues. Don't underestimate the venerable lp. However you still have problems of noise and record wear to contend with.

 

[stevenkelby]

Good post. Vinyl can be terrible but when it's great, it blows away CD. There's just so much more info there. I think it's because peaks don't just appear like with digital, where one instant you have silence and in the next, 100db. With vinyl they ramp up as the groove gets wider or narrower.

I think that whole principle goes on through the whole LP, it's just smoother and all the little bits of info missing between the sample rate of digital are filled in with vinyl.

I know that's not really accurate, DACs fill in the blanks anyway, but it's how it sounds.

I agree the noise can add positively to the sound, not just negatively.

The Last record treatments seem to have reduced any wear on LPs too, I use it all religously. I have 2 copies of Grace bought at the same time, one played close to 100 times, one still new. They still sound the same.

 

[bigshot]

There are several issues here...

First of all, the master tape is nearly fifty years old. It may have suffered particle shedding, wear or it may be a submaster, replacing a damaged or lost original session master. I would bet that the master used for the mazurkas was a different generation than the polonaises. When a whole side sounds different, it's usually because a submaster was employed.

Secondly, if the CD has absolutely no tape hiss, it has had noise reduction applied to it. Analogue recordings always have hiss. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it's a judgement call on the part of the engineer as to how much and what kind of noise reduction to employ. (If it is EMI, there is a very good chance that the noise reduction has been over-used.)

Thirdly, you are quite right about noise adding "sparkle" to sound. When you remove all tape hiss, a psycho-acoustic principle comes into play. The human ear hears music with a tiny bed of hiss as being "brighter" sounding than the exact same recording with no hiss at all. This is why most reissues leave a little bit of hiss behind after noise reduction. It's entirely possible that if you added a tiny bed of hiss to the CD track, it would sound just as bright as the LP.

LPs can sound great. So can CDs. It all depends on the quality of the pressing, restoration techniques and mastering.

See ya
Steve

 

[Jon L]

Well, what does this prove, really?
What you have observed says much more about your particular turntable and CDP than the actual medium itself.

 

[ozz]

Anyone try any of the mobile fidelity stuff i had one are two back in
the 80's.

 

[jp11801]

in general terms this is what I have found:

Rock and most jazz cds that are reissued by major la bels are generally not as good as clean lp original copies. This may have something to do with the medium but more likely has more to do with the mastering.

releases that are made from modern recordings most of which are done in with digital tape or from computer based HD recording are either equal across mediums or are preferable in the cd format.

For example I like the analog productions Waltz for Debbie LP over the XRCD version. People also tend to forget that most vinyl lovers have far more invested in their front end than do digital front ends. A good table, arm, cart and phono pre can set you back $4000 plus where a digital front end might be $2000-$3000. No amount of digital front end can compensate for hot mastering, heavy handed noise reduction and ham fisted compression that plagues most modern rock and reissues of rock and jazz releases.

Interestingly enough if you have a tt and a cdp take a rat shack db meter and play a track and check for the lowest and highest reading during playback of the same track. Most lps in the rock and jazz genre that were recorded before the advent of digital tape will show greater dynamic range in the lp format. This is not due to any advantage that lps have over digital in thais area but are a direct result of mastering.

 

[jp11801]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyone try any of the mobile fidelity stuff i had one are two back in the 80's.

many MoFi reissues on lp are not as good as the original from a SQ perspective but have better quality vinyl that is less noisy. The smiley face eq that many have is less desirable. An example would be the Beatles catalog. I would take a clean UK pressing over a mofi.

 

[edstrelow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, what does this prove, really? What you have observed says much more about your particular turntable and CDP than the actual medium itself.

Probably true but I was still surprised that the cd didn't wipe the floor with the lp. Sometimes it's enlightening to have your prejudices challenged.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif There are several issues here... First of all, the master tape is nearly fifty years old. It may have suffered particle shedding, wear or it may be a submaster, replacing a damaged or lost original session master. I would bet that the master used for the mazurkas was a different generation than the polonaises. When a whole side sounds different, it's usually because a submaster was employed. Secondly, if the CD has absolutely no tape hiss, it has had noise reduction applied to it. Analogue recordings always have hiss. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it's a judgement call on the part of the engineer as to how much and what kind of noise reduction to employ. (If it is EMI, there is a very good chance that the noise reduction has been over-used.) Thirdly, you are quite right about noise adding "sparkle" to sound. When you remove all tape hiss, a psycho-acoustic principle comes into play. The human ear hears music with a tiny bed of hiss as being "brighter" sounding than the exact same recording with no hiss at all. This is why most reissues leave a little bit of hiss behind after noise reduction. It's entirely possible that if you added a tiny bed of hiss to the CD track, it would sound just as bright as the LP. LPs can sound great. So can CDs. It all depends on the quality of the pressing, restoration techniques and mastering. See ya Steve

Agree on most points except that I suspect the mazurka side of the lp was just very worn. This lp was not that far from the recording date when issued. It had been played with some pretty nasty cartridge/arm combinations over the years whereas I rarely listened to the polonaises until the last few years. I suspect I stripped a lot of high frequencies off the lp. Of course one doesn't know about masters and the like.